Harry Jaffe: Fenty twins set to attend D.C. public schools
By: Harry Jaffe
Examiner Columnist
July 31, 2009
Chatter around town has it that Mayor Adrian Fenty and his wife Michelle have decided to send their twin sons to public school in the fall.
This news will come as a relief to many public school advocates; merely deciding to entrust the twin boys, 8, to public schools might provide plenty of relief. Ah, but which of the five elementary schools in Upper Northwest have they chosen?
Depends on whose chatter you believe.
No matter, public school parents and advocates in D.C. are so starved for attention and approval, any school will suffice. We have been beaten to submission by politicians who "love-love-love" public education yet choose to send their precious progeny to private schools.
I got horsewhipped by many readers for merely suggesting that Barack and Michelle Obama consider sending their daughters to public schools in D.C. Francis-Stevens Elementary, on the city's posh West End, seemed like a swell school to me, but no, the president who's crusading to improve public education sent Sasha and Malia to Sidwell. How Clintonian.
Local politicians have followed the similar path of jaw boning about "the importance of our youth" and "improving our public schools," yet precious few have followed through when it involved their kids. One has to go back years and dig deep into the lives of council members to find the few who have sent their children to the public schools they so love to admire, from the safe distance of a private or parochial school.
Start with Marion Barry. He began his political career as chair of the school board back in 1972. He did send his son, Christopher, to public school -- for one year at Wilson Senior High. Take Kevin Chavous. For many years the Ward 7 council member chaired the education committee, but he sent his children to parochial schools. Former Ward 3 council member Kathy Patterson is one of the few who entrusted her children to D.C.P.S.
Of the current crop of council members with kids, Kwame Brown and Harry Thomas Jr. send their children to charter schools, which are kind of public. Ward 2's Jack Evans sends his triplets to a private school. To my knowledge, School Chancellor Michelle Rhee is the only high-ranking public official to send children to local public schools -- her daughters attend Oyster Elementary. Fenty has made fixing the schools his government's top goal; sending his kids elsewhere would have been hard to swallow.
So which school will get Andrew and Matthew Fenty? They had been going to Tots Development School, a private school near their Crestwood home. West Elementary is the Fenty's neighborhood school, but the school off 16th Street in Upper Northwest has been in turmoil. Michelle Fenty toured five grade schools -- Janney, Murch, Key, Eaton and Lafayette -- across Rock Creek Park. Each had a shot. My sources tell me the twins will attend Lafayette. If so, great choice: my three daughters got a terrific start in life from the classrooms at Lafayette.
No doubt some in the whining classes will complain that the Fentys should be sending the boys to West. Don't listen.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at hjaffe@washingtonexaminer.com
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